Game Designers and Google Glass

Like many technophiles, I’m sure most of you are aware of Google’s portable computing device, Glass. I had, like many of you I’m sure, written off Glass as a novelty that has no place for serious game developers.

I’m happy to admit that I might be wrong.

Raph Koster recently tweeted his reaction to Noah Falstein’s A Game Designer’s Guide to Glass. Designer Dragon’s reaction was about the same as mine, when I got to read it.

A game designer's Guide to Google Glass: http://t.co/OUufg3vMws Interesting!

— Raph Koster (@raphkoster) October 23, 2013

Looking at the possibilities with Glass, it was apparent that NOT making use of it would be a crime against gaming. Applications developed for Glass represent a revamp of game play. You can forgo many of the traditional keyboard and mouse commands when voice, touch, and gesture input are available; you can make an action occur by blinking. That is incredible.

There are drawbacks, but many of these are social (voice and head movement input, especially) or branding (“Glasshole”). Glass is just the first of these wearable devices to be released; Microsoft is researching something similar, and I’m sure Apple has something in mind as well. This is an ecosystem that will change the way games are made; either directly to the wearable computer, or by tying it as an input to another device (console, PC, or tablet). Imagine what several devices could do together; something like Glass, Kinect, and an iPad working in harmony.

Take a gander through the document, and then let your imagination go wild.